A master plan unveiled for L.A. County’s former General Hospital imagines a “healthy village” of affordable housing, public spaces and the county’s biggest health and mental health complex. But the developer says the vision—built around a 19-story historic bui
Inside Los Angeles’ iconic General Hospital, the future has been sketched in watercolor—an illustration that turns a derelict, 19-story shell into a neighborhood where hospital staff, patients, and new on-site residents would mingle in outdoor dining, shopping corridors and community gardens.
The master plan released by Centennial Partners blends affordable housing. local businesses. food courts. cultural venues and open space. all arranged around a central web of walking paths tying the historic building to the Los Angeles County General Medical Center to the south and a new commercial zone to the west.
But the project’s lead engineer for the dream is also blunt about what comes next. The developer estimates the healthy village would take 15 years to complete and require $1 billion to $2 billion in private, philanthropic and taxpayer funds—money that has yet to be secured.
For nearly a year, preparations have been underway out of public view. Furniture, fixtures and detritus were cleared from the building after tenants occupying the lower four floors began vacating. A seismic upgrade is set to begin later this year. By summer. more visible construction is expected to start on land west of the Art Deco tower that became a familiar backdrop to “General Hospital.” Several outdated and temporary buildings will be removed to make way for a massive grading project.
That grading is designed to sculpt a 40-foot elevation drop into a terraced walkway connecting the old and new parts of the village together. Officials say the grading and retrofit work is being covered with $120 million cobbled by the county from local. state and federal sources to prepare a clean slate for investors of all sizes.
The plan is the culmination of a seven-year push kicked off when Supervisor Hilda Solis in 2018 issued a motion to study whether the Depression-era building could be adapted as housing and whether a patchwork of county agencies could be replaced with a mixed-use development centered on health.
By December 2023, county supervisors selected Centennial Partners as the master developer. The team is made up of Primestor Development and Bayspring Real Estate Partners. Last July. Centennial Partners issued a conceptual plan for a mixed-use neighborhood featuring affordable. workforce and market-rate housing; retail; health services; open space; and connections to public transit. Two parcels included in the earlier 41.9-acre plan were withdrawn to reserve them for future use by the medical center.
The new master plan expands that concept with extensive detail—historical data, environmental guidelines and specific design principles. One of them is “common ground,” with ground-level floor space reserved for commercial uses or other spaces open to the public.
“You’ll always have a lobby or a first floor for each of the buildings being for public-serving programs,” project director Giovanna Araujo said.
Another principle focuses on keeping the interior life of the village accessible. Parking is planned at key points with direct access to outside streets, leaving the interior space free of cars.
At the heart of the campus is a triangular layout of walking corridors linking a new commercial zone on the west, the historic hospital building on the east, and the Los Angeles County General Medical Center on the south. Those corridors would run through plazas, small parks and exercise stations.
A major timeline hinge comes after the seismic retrofit is completed—estimated at about five years—when a developer would then be sought to convert the upper floors of the historic building into housing. The massive ground floor—described as about the length of one and a half football fields—would be developed as community space. including a food hall or a kitchen incubator celebrating local cuisines. The plan also calls for a café serving alfresco dining on the forecourt and small neighborhood-serving shops.
Community rooms and meeting spaces would be designed to support neighborhood councils, workshops, conferences and public lectures. County officials are also keeping one part of the building’s identity intact: the stately foyer. adorned with granite. murals and statuary. would be preserved and open to all.
Plans for the commercial hub remain flexible, left open within a set of options that could produce more density or less, and that could emphasize either housing or office space depending on market conditions and what investors are willing to support in the coming years.
“That is all to be determined over time as we’re able to identify the appropriate funding mechanism and the appropriate support we would need politically and from the community to make a particular endeavor happen,” Araujo said.
Even without a specific housing target, Araujo said the plan contains its own set of commitments: 25% of all development would be housing, and at least 25% of all housing would be affordable.
The 40-foot elevation drop between the General Hospital forecourt and the commercial hub is meant to be softened by raising the low area about 20 feet. The plan suggests two ways this could be done—filling it with debris from hospital construction and graded earth. or leveling it with parking structures that would support an elevated ground floor.
The 30.8-acre revitalized campus would become part of a larger medical complex. In addition to the medical center. the parcel northeast of the I-5 and I-10 interchange would house the Restorative Care Village: a 64-bed emergency mental health facility. a 96-bed recuperative center for homeless patients discharged from the hospital. and soon-to-be-completed facilities with 32 beds for crisis substance use withdrawal and 96 beds for long-term psychiatric care.
Araujo said physical connections to those facilities would integrate the new campus into patients’ care.
With the master plan in hand. Centennial Partners says it is now ready to begin the crucial phase of finding capital. Part of that effort includes applying for the historic hospital building’s inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. Araujo said the designation—which had never been sought before—would allow the use of historic tax credits to help fund the building’s conversion to housing.
County officials are also examining whether to form an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, which would allow financing of public improvements secured against future property tax increases.
Philanthropic money may help fill gaps, but private investors are expected to be essential to reaching completion. Primestor President Leandro Tyberg said, “All are welcome.”
The need for patience isn’t just about money. David Garcia. deputy director of policy for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley and author of a report on the challenges of adaptive reuse. said an older hospital building can offer advantages for conversion to housing. including intersecting wings that provide natural light to every room—something that is required by law and can be hard to achieve in modern commercial buildings.
Its size, Garcia said, can also help spread costs.
“The more homes you can fit into the building the more you can spread your cost out,” Garcia said.
Given the work ahead—retrofitting, remediation, replacement of obsolete utility systems and massive grading—Garcia said the long timeline didn’t surprise him.
“It’s going to take a long time to address these issues that make it challenging in addition to making it very unique,” he said.
For now, the healthy village plan for General Hospital has the design, the sequencing and the political groundwork. What’s missing is what turns drawings into doors opening: the capital—$1 billion to $2 billion—still waiting to be secured.
General Hospital Los Angeles healthy village Centennial Partners Hilda Solis affordable housing seismic retrofit adaptive reuse historic tax credits Restorative Care Village UC Berkeley Terner Center National Register of Historic Places Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District